A careless rat is being blamed for a power outage that left the Fukushima nuclear plant's storage tanks without cooling.
Late on Monday, March 18, TEPCO experienced a power cut at cooling equipment serving the nuclear fuel storage tanks, in an incident that took 30 hours to overcome (the company emphaised that during the outage …

Maybe the rat is a mutant, trying to assure the radiation of his benighted brethern!!

Besides, are you going to believe TEPCO after their "Don't worry, be happy" handling of the initial accident? I smell a rat, I tell you!!

(Black helicopter, because the next thing you hear the rats will mysteriously start chewing the cabling of airplanes, effectively cutting Japan off from the outside world and grounding the Japanese military's air support.)

wow

Re: wow

Leaving cost aside, is nuclear actually all that dangerous in practice? Look at Fukushima, how many people have died? How bad would have the incident been originally if some nerp hadn't fudged the books over the height of the wall required?

I'm not a huge fan of nuclear, but I think for now it has a place as part of our overall strategy for energy generation alongside gas \ wind \ solar \ tidal \ geothermal etc. The sanity of putting nuclear power stations in areas with a history of earthquakes \ tsunamis etc if questionable at best and the continued use of nuclear necessitates an entirely new look at how safety is implemented and monitored so commercial interests cannot fudge things again. Having said that, nuclear isn't as shocking as some people make out and until something better comes along to take up its share it will probably continue to be used.

Re: wow

You don't actually know how many people have had or will have their lives cut short by this disaster because the Japanese are not very forthcoming ... which was part of the problem in the first place!

The only potentially good nuclear reactor seems to be the one that those people at MIT just invented. However, I'm pretty sure that because it doesn't provide the scope for corruption and cost inflation it wont be taken up.

However, if you think nuclear is so great why don't you move next to one. Thought not!

Re: wow

Re: wow

Well, I used to live three miles form Heysham, and I now live about 7-8 miles from Aldermaston and 10 or so from Burghfield - not power plants, but sites with rather a lot of enriched uranium, plutonium and tritium around. I can't say any of them causes me the slightest worry.

I also spent a few years living within five miles of Drax - which both from particulates and from the regular deposits of wind-blown fly-ash probably did far more damage to my long-term health.

Re: wow

@ ac

I did for 30 years. Right now I would be very happy to have a nuclear reactor on island, all we have is an oil burning power station and a token wind farm.

So you are saying people did die and it got hushed up? How very convienient for your point of view. Yes there may be long term health problems but the point I was making was that it could have been far worse and if commercial interests hadn't been allowed to compromise the safety of the plant in the first place it could have been lots better.

It certainly is not as bad as some people would like to make it out to be. The reality is that we will be using nuclear for a while, it is better to focus on improving security and safety than wage an impossible battle to stop it.

Re: wow

Re: wow

I am the first to admit poor people not having access to affordable energy is a big problem worldwide as well. Nuclear may have its place but its costs are not near as economical long term as say natural gas from what I understand (decommissioning for example is not cheap or simple). Still the most worrying thing about nuclear is unlike all our other energy options its the only one that leaves pollution capable of killing life millions of years in the future long after our species has disappeared and our best current solution is to bury it and pray.

Re: wow

> pollution capable of killing life millions of years in the future long after our species has disappeared

You will find that this is certainly not true. Expecting Chuck-Norris-like-killscale via the few tons of slowly decaying crud is RIDICULOUS. Even today, the fauna and flora around Pripyat are nowhere near dead. You realise that granite is highly radioactive and uranium is a 100% natural product?

Additionally: "species dead" ---> NO ONE CARES

Additionally: "millions of years in the future" ---> A bit of planetary extinction event will probably have come along anyway. Take that, greens.

Re: wow

Frankly, I am more worried about soot pollution from coal plants than any imaginable risks from nuclear one. Unless, of course, the nuclear plant is built to 30 years old designs of Russian origin. Which luckily will never happen again.

Sad really that there are so few statistics comparing death figures from coal against nuclear.

In 1959, the WHO signed Agreement WHA 12–40 with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The agreement states that the WHO recognises the IAEA as having responsibility for peaceful nuclear energy without prejudice to the roles of the WHO of promoting health. However, the following paragraph adds: "whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement".[92] The nature of this statement has led some pressure groups and activists (including Women in Europe for a Common Future) to believe that the WHO is restricted in its ability to investigate the effects on human health of radiation caused by the use of nuclear power and the continuing effects of nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima. They believe WHO must regain what they see as "independence".

Re: wow

Some nerp or nerps fudged the books over the height of the wall required in ALL regions.

If you have been awake at all for the past 2 years you would know that people were unconcerned about the Tsumani coming because they knew that the height of the barrier was high enought for any wave thought possible.

Re: wow...why don't you move next to one.

I live within 75 miles of a nuke plant that, because managementdamagement wanting to save some money, (to increase their year end bonuses) decided to perform a "DIY" nuke plant repair. (see http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/consumer-advocates-want-investigation-into-crystal-river-nuclear-plant-deal/1276531 ) Seventh paragraph says it all.

In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

at £14 Billion with price per MWh at twice the market rate - on par with off-shore wind power. Let's hope it will cost less to decomission at the end of its life. When will we see an article about this on El Reg? I am especially looking forward to see the positive spin that the editor can put on it after repeatedly claiming how cheap nuclear power is compared to wind turbines...

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

In other news England hit bit a magnitude 9 earth quake and 40.5m high tsunami!

Grow up and get some perspective, over ten thousands people died the day of Tohoku quake, over a hundred thousand buildings were flattened, over two hundred thousand buildings were partially collapsed. If people weren't so retarded about nuclear power the area around Fukushima would already be back to normal as it's pretty much unscaved.

How about you stop talking shit and think about all the dead people, the people that survived them, and the literally millions of people left harmed in one way or another by the event.

@AC 07:02 Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

In a technical article about a nuclear power plant, someone makes a disparaging comment about the cost effectiveness of nuclear power; so you raise the spectre of a natural disaster two years ago and claim that he is being disrespectful to the dead and the survivors. WTF?

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

What? You expect nuclear power supporters to take in account the decommissioning costs? What´s next? Taking in account the cost of residue management for the next X thousand years? Sir, you're a hopeless optimist!

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

Your numbers are all wrong. Capacity factor for off-shore wind power is around 40%, and modern turbines can give well over 50%: http://energynumbers.info/capacity-factors-at-danish-offshore-wind-farms. Life expectancy is 20-25 years based on older designs, new turbines should be able to reach 30 years. The area used for off-shore wind farms doesn't matter at all, we won't be running out of sea soon, will we? And you don't need additional backup beyond existing gas peakers and mainland connectors, the number of total windstill days per year across the UK is extremely small.

As for costs, an off-shore windfarm costs about £4.6 million per 3.6MW turbine installed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Gabbard_Wind_Farm). The grid connection is the expensive part if there isn't already one (£862 million for Gabbard). If we scale up to 6400MW (2x peak power needed due to 40% capacity factor vs 80% for nuclear), then the turbine cost would be £8.25 Billion. Add say 3 billion for a high capacity grid connection and you're still way below £14 Billion.

So yes, even off-shore wind-power is cheaper than new nuclear. And that's assuming that Hinkley C will be on budget - a big assumption.

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

Difference between nuclear and wind turbines is that even if nuclear is as expensive as wind, we can turn it on at will. If the wind drops during the ad break in Corrie, then cue the rolling blackouts as 9 million people go and turn on their kettles...

With current (and near future) technology there is zero prospect of wind or solar providing adequately stable baseload. Tidal is predictable, which is good, but all that means is you can predict that slack-water will occur during said peak hours!

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

In other news England hit bit a magnitude 9 earth quake and 40.5m high tsunami!"

An earthquake of that magnitute in a place of such relative geological stability seems to require meteorite impact, and such a tsunami is more likely, given that tsunamis can impact coasts and estuaries thousands of miles away from an earthquake or meteor impact and historical evidence for such incidents exists. .

Locations such as the Severn Estuary are also favoured sites for the location of nuclear power plant,due to the need for cooling water and having a coastline which isn't subject to silting up or coastal erosion.

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

Whilst you make good points about the power-factor and general unpredictability of wind turbines, a tsunami wouldn't actually affect an off-shore farm (unless they're built on an especially shallow sand bank or somewhere barely off-shore). The ships in the Indian Ocean didn't notice as the Boxing Day wave passed beneath them, raising sea level by maybe a metre over a horizontal distance of miles. The wave doesn't start to break (i.e. slow down and start stacking up on top of itself) until it gets near shore, specifically where the water depth is less than 1/2 the wavelength.

Of course if it breaks over a sand bar, then the ensuing wash up into the North Sea for instance could be quite harmful, as it would be to onshore structures, but wind farms shouldn't really have any problems surviving an unbroken tsunami wave. Of course the power house on the beach where the cables come ashore is basically screwed!

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

Rh587

Offshore turbines are located on shallow water banks for exactly the reason that they can then have proper foundations.

there are proposals to build floating systems, but so far they're just that or an ocassional prototype. All the actual commercial developments to date, and that are currently in the application process use grouted foundations of one sort or another.

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

Actually wind power is as predictable as tides, you know what weather is coming days ahead and take appropriate action. You could even keep an old coal station as backup for the few rare days when there is no wind at all across the whole of the UK (if you wanted it to be 100% renewable you could burn wood pellets). But in general it is always windy somewhere, so as long as you spread turbines across the UK, you are OK. The same is true for tides, when it is low tide in one place, other places would be at 100% capacity.

Wind power is never going to be baseload on its own obviously, but combined with tidal, pumped storage, solar etc it can provide a significant percentage of our energy needs without major upheaval to the grid.

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

"Wind power is never going to be baseload on its own obviously, but combined with tidal, pumped storage, solar etc it can provide a significant percentage of our energy needs without major upheaval to the grid."

You really know nothing about the electricity sector, do you? The mandated use of renewables is saving stuff all in emissions, but destroys the system marginal pricing model. That makes the thermal plant that renewables require for back up uneconomic, meaning they go off grid and you suffer the consequences, or you pay even more subsidies to keep them on grid. That's already happening in Germany and Italy, where laws are being passed to try and stop the decomissioning of uneconomic plant, in a Canute like attempt to avoid the economic inevitable. The UK isn't far behind, and with the idiotic decommissionings of LCPD you can be sure no good will come of it.

Despite your protestations, wind output is not reliably enough forecast for thermal plant to be switched off, but hey, what do I know, I only work for a company that operates over 4GW of wind turbines.

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

"But in general it is always windy somewhere, so as long as you spread turbines across the UK, you are OK. The same is true for tides, when it is low tide in one place, other places would be at 100% capacity."

The UK certainly isn't big enough to get significant dispersion as far as wind is concerned - in fact, even across North-West europe, there's still significant coupling (all our weather systems are driven by the same Atlantic systems).

And with tide, although there's some staggering, it's not that great - after all, it's the same moon that's pullling for all of us.

The bigger issue with tide, tbh, is sheer cost. It's bad enough on the Severn, which is about the best site in europe - where £20-30Bn for an average output is bad enough. But that's cheap compare to other sites, resulting in probable costs in the area of £300/MWh.

Tidal output is broadly proportionate to the tidal range - up to 7 metres on the Severn. Costs are mostly driven by civil engineering costs in building the barrage.

Think about doing the same on something like the Mersey or the Wash, and you're doubling the size of the civil works to move similar volumes of water, and half the tidal range. Tidal is VERY site conditions dependent.

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

"and with the idiotic decommissionings of LCPD you can be sure no good will come of it"

that I part company with you on - the LCPD adresses SOx, NOx and particulates emissions. The fact that we've screwed up on timing is one thing - retiring plant that can't be economically retrofitted with control kit for those can't be a bad thing at least in principle.

Mephisto @ http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/1767935

so wrong

decommissioning costs ARE already included in all new builds - except those (technically speaking) useless pointless windmills.

Residue management - that's what fast breeder reactors are for; except we're not allowed to build them because most people have no understanding of how nuclear works. Well why would they; most people don't understand how windmills actually (don't) work and they are orders of magnitude simpler.

wilco 1 http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/1768612

excuse me while I wipe my eyes & pick myself off the floor and recover from laughing.

IT IS NOT ALWAYS WINDY SOMEWHERE near enough to be worth having an interconnector join. In fact a cold day in European winter is often windless over most of the NW Europe

A few rare days - on average over the last few tears that would be some 3 weeks per year of NO WIND in NW EUROPE - and it is always COLD so demand is at PEAK

Look here : http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk then compare the wind farm output against demand - is there any corelation - only with when it's cold in winter the output is down.

You obviously have no concept of tidal flow; marine engineering or just how you are going to connect all those little tidal gennerators into the grid ?

Every windmill and every tidal generator and every PV panel HAS TO have a proper power station to back it up - so since you can not just turn a power station on & off - you may as well save the cost (and raw materials) involved in building stuff that is not demand lead generating capacity.

If you really believe that renewables can replace proper power stations - use the link (http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk) to work out how much 'lecky you can draw at any given time - when the wind ain't blowint and the sun's in bed then you can turn all your electricity OFF.

Pumped storage where are you going to put it ?

ANy idea of what 30GW of electricity looks like as pumped storage ? Oh my; I'd like to see you get that lot past the greenies - even 10% of it.

Re: In other news... @Wilco 1

"Rubbish. It's 32% like for like on a five year average, according to the wind farm enthusiasts at DECC."

Rubbish. That's the UK average which includes some farms with low availability (67% vs EU average of 93% for some due to maintenance issues) taking the average down. I provided several links showing 40% average, one for a newly built UK farm (yes it did over 40% since it was completed: http://www.variablepitch.co.uk/station/370/) and one for Denmark showing newer farms are at 44% average, with some breaking 50%! The capacity factor of the latest turbines has improved a lot so that is the benchmark to use for future wind farms.

Re: peter_dtm

Well better not read your own post then, you will laugh so hard at the total BS you wrote you might actually die this time... 30GW of pumped storage, what the hell would you need that for? Every single solar panel needs a power station as backup?!? Where on earth did you pull that stuff from? Oh, I know, did you forget to take your meds?

"decommissioning costs ARE already included in all new builds - except those (technically speaking) useless pointless windmills."

And that's probably the reason for EDF Energy asking for ~twice the current market price/Megawatt. On the other hand decommissioning a wind power plant is PROFITABLE by itself, as most of the materials can be easily recovered and recycled, while decommissioning a nuke plant is dangerous, difficult, expensive and generally speaking a PITA. Also, we can't totally discard the possibility of the energy company disappearing/going bankrupt/whatever before being able to fulfill their part of the bargain, with the taxpayers having finally to foot the bill. It has happened before, you know.

"Residue management - that's what fast breeder reactors are for"

Yes, but -for whatever the reason- Hinkley Point C is NOT a breeder reactor, so your argument here is a little bit pointless. I'd also add the same caveat I wrote in my first paragraph, i.e. that there is no assurance that the energy company will be able to perform the residue management part of the deal, regardless whether said management has to run for 10,000 years or a meagre (;-) 200.

"most people have no understanding of how nuclear works"

There is a small-but-growing number of people who understands how politics works, and the way that all that investment and job creation and kickbacks and the whatnot would help sweep most criticism under the rug, regardless of the validity of the claims.

I'm not totally against nuclear energy. I agree that in the future it may be our only chance. But, till we reach that point, we should be improving the technology to minimize the risks involved and maximize its efficiency. As of late it seems that several steps in that direction are being taken -i.e. the salt reactor designed by the MIT guys- but I don't think we're quite there yet.

Re: peter_dtm

If you don't understand the problem of intermittent un-predicatable generation then ther is no hope for you.

When the sun ain't shining sunshine; in the UK - in winter it tends to be COLD - so demand tends to be high.

Now if ALL the PV is OFF; and the wind aint blowing just where are you going to magik all that electricity from ??

Pull it out of a hat ?

Oh I know - says the non technocal I don't know or care how it works clever dick - we'll use pumped storge.

So if we have no coal; no gas no nuclear you need to make 30GW. If your backup to useless windmills and low efficiency PV is pumped storage you'll need 30GW of pumped storage.

Or are you happy for the lights to go out ?

What else could we use as backup to PV & Wind ? -- well since you need to provision for when it's night time & the wind aint blowing; why don't we use err ??

Nuclear; Coal & Gas are good reliable ways to produce on demand electricity. Until someone comes up with a way to store 30GW any thing ellse currently proposed (wind/solar/tidal) is a waste of money/resources/effort

Actually the wind mill blades are not easy to re-cycle - nor is the masively deep foundations required (made out of re-enforced concrete)

Fast Breeder reactors - the point of that comment is that waste disposal is NOT a probelm - except for the politics which will not allow the right (safe) technology to be used. Its a bit like banning gear boxes and then wondering why a windmill's blades don't drive a generator ....

Re: peter_dtm

No we don't need 30GW of backup or storage. We already have existing power stations that provide the baseload. Nobody ever claimed we should get rid of those. And neither do we need to build any new power stations to backup solar/wind - we already have them! When it is windstill we do exactly the same as we currently do when a power station has an unexpected problem and goes offline in mere seconds - hydro/peakers and other power stations pick up the slack. Luckily wind and solar are far more predictable than those kinds of events...

It's not possible to store 30GW today. But we don't ever need to, so stop making the claim that renewables require that kind of storage. They don't and never will. What's more, suggesting that renewables are useless because of that is even more stupid. The fact is we can't go 100% nuclear either. How do you follow the demand curve? Nuclear can't do that so of course it's completely useless! Neither 100% coal - way too slow for demand, completely useless! Nor 100% gas - where on earth do we get that much gas from? Stop people from cooking and heating their homes??? So according to your logic nuclear, coal and gas are all useless and a complete waste of money/resources/effort...

Re: In other news... first new UK nuclear power station approved

The ridiculous rate for the electricity is just one of the many bribes, sorry "incentives", the government paid to EDF to build the plant. When EDF saw how desperate the government was for this plant they decided to pretend to be reluctant to see how much they could get out of the British government. I don't think they were expecting quite so much, though.

Re: Was it an annoying yellow rat?

You actually take TEPCO's word for it?

Damn TEPCO and all those that got kick backs. Nothing much has changed to prevent this from happening again. "This" as in a lots of people dying, getting ripped off, scammed, maimed, sick, etc., because of some official's greed and the time honored tradition of being ambiguous.